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It's been a while since I did one of these. If you're coming across this late, the Phoenix Affirmations are a collection of statements that attempt to define what progressive Christianity is. I've been going through them one by one so my comments on 1-8 can be found earlier on the blog, or there is a study guide here.
This is a simple affirmation: God loves people.
That's an interesting statement as much for what it doesn't say as for what it does. It doesn't say any of these things:
- God loves some people, but hates others.
- God loves all people, but loves some more than others.
- God loves good people, but has a different attitude toward bad people.
- God loves believers, but has a different attitude toward non-believers.
You can find Christians who believe any of these statements. You can even find passages in the bible to support them. There are a lot of rules about what a person has to do or not do in order to be acceptable in God's sight. But the overwhelming motion of scripture is that God will break any of these rules out of love for us.
The Old Testament prophets are not considered a very 'touchy-feely' group of people. They appeared at a time when Israel was fragmented into two kingdoms, Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah. This is a time when there was a great deal of social injustice as the wealthy and powerful took advantage of the poor and helpless. This was also a time when the people, and even the leaders, were attracted to worshipping the gods of the neighboring nations.
The prophets challenged both of these things. They told the people that, if things didn't change, God would turn away from them for all time and their enemies would overcome them. The people didn't stop and their enemies did overcome them. The Assyrian Empire destroyed the kingdom of Israel and its people were lost to history. The kingdom of Judah struggled on for a time before it was overwhelmed by the Babylonian Empire.
The message of the prophets--the word of God--had been that this would be the end. God had promised that it was over and the honor of God depended on keeping his word. Yet, as the people lived in exile, a new message came to them. God still loved them, God was always with them, and there was still hope for the future. The love of God was so great that it was willing to do things that broke the rules. God was willing to set aside his honor for the sake of love.
You see something similar in the life of Jesus. The scribes and Pharisees believed in the idea that God loved some people (those who were ritually clean and kept the Law of Moses), but not others (foreigners, people who didn't keep ritually clean, the mentally and physically ill or handicapped, etc). But Jesus reached out to these people, touching, teaching, welcoming. His whole life, and his death and resurrection for that matter, were about tearing down the barriers that kept people form a faithful relationship with God or loving relationships with each other.
God loves people--not some people, but all people.
There are two implications for us. The first is that we ought to love others as God does. We ought to love others as ourselves, without judgment or splitting humanity into several categories. We ought to simply love.
The second is to remember that, no matter what, God loves us. No matter how bad we may feel about ourselves and the things happening in our lives, God still loves us and longs to heal the broken parts of our lives.
Isaiah said it better than I can so I'll close this with a favorite passage:
"Can a mother forget the infant at her breast,
walk away from the baby she bore?
But even if mothers forget,
I'd never forget you—never.
Look, I've written your names on the backs of my hands. (Isaiah 49:15-16)
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